A 25-year-old man who was charged as an adult years after a crash that happened when he was a teenager pleaded guilty Monday to vehicular manslaughter.

Ryan Burger was sentenced to three years of probation by Westmoreland County Judge Rita Hathaway. He also must wear an ankle monitor.

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Burger was 16 on May 7, 2000, when the car he was driving slammed into a vehicle carrying Malia Ciocco, 18, and her stepfather in Derry Township.

The crash on Industrial Boulevard critically injured Ciocco, who was a schoolmate of Burger's at Derry Area High School.

At a hearing in April, Burger's defense asked that he be tried as a juvenile because he was still a month shy of his 17th birthday on the day of the crash, but Hathaway ruled that Burger would be considered an adult if he opted to go to trial.

Ciocco was in a coma for eight months. Unable to speak or walk, she was cared for in her parents' Bradenville home until her death last year.

"It was someone you loved deeply and didn't mind taking care of. She was a great girl," said stepfather David Krinock. "She would try to voice things to you. She would look at you with the most beautiful brown eyes."

Krinock was also injured in the crash and requires the use of a cane. He said that he was driving his daughter home from a sleepover before she was to serve at mass.

"You learn not to worry about trivial things -- that's what it is -- life is fleeting. Malia was probably one of my best friends, and I lost her. Little things don't bother me. I can over come it -- you can overcome it -- and everybody else can overcome little things," said Krinock.

WTAE Channel 4 Action News reported that jurors would not have heard Burger's record after the accident, which includes a 2003 arrest for drunken driving and guilty pleas for speeding and failing to drive at a safe speed.